sto·ic (noun)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
- capitalized : a member of a school of philosophy founded by Zeno of Citium about 300 b.c. holding that the wise man should be free from passion, unmoved by joy or grief, and submissive to natural law
- : one apparently or professedly indifferent to pleasure or pain.
Many years ago, I interviewed a professor of Linguistics from a major university. At the time, I was annoyed that the word “unique,” meaning one-of-a-kind, was routinely showing up in print as a synonym for rare. “What’s happening to our language?” I asked the scholar.
“Language is fluid,” he explained. “It’s a living thing. It evolves with time.”
“So, you’re saying the meanings of words change as people use them incorrectly? Language sinks to the lowest common denominator?”
He replied, “More or less. Yes.”
However it got there, it’s the word “indifferent” in the above definition of stoic that I have the most trouble with.
Stoicism, as I am learning to practice it, involves acceptance, not necessarily indifference. Was I incredibly sad when my parents died? Absolutely, and I responded with all the tears and sorrow one would expect. But I didn’t curse the heavens or refuse to move on in the natural course of my life. I wasn’t indifferent. I was accepting.
Choking back emotion is not the Stoic way
To the greater population, being a Stoic has come to be synonymous with showing no emotion, keeping a stiff upper lip and all of that. As if human beings can somehow shut down their emotional responses and carry on, despite a growing ball of frustration in their bellies.
Feelings don’t simply turn off because we tell them to. Choking back emotion is not the Stoic way. Acknowledging it, reasoning through it and accepting it is the general routine.
The emergence of an emotion is an opportunity to learn about oneself and to grow from that experience. A Stoic looks at themselves as objectively as possible when an emotion rises up.
I used to get very nervous before appearing in front of a live audience. My job entailed going on stage before big concerts and other productions to welcome and warm up the crowd, so getting nervous was potentially limiting. My inner voice would tell me to flee. Call in sick. Acquire some sort of semi-serious injury so I wouldn’t have to make the appearance.
This response was one of those learning opportunities. I thought seriously about why the experience grew such intense feelings of fear. Surely, it was normal to feel a little nervous about appearing before hundreds or thousands of strangers. But I would sometimes physically shake and feel a giant lump in my throat. What was I really afraid of? The answer came back that I was scared of screwing up and not being liked.
I checked the fear against reality. I knew what I was supposed to do, and I’d done similar things a hundred times or more. I’d also had a couple of incidents where things went awry, and I’d handled them with grace and a laugh or two. But when it came right down to it, did I really care what these people thought of me? They were there to see a concert or a play. I was to be nothing more than a blip in their evening.
Courage is forging ahead despite fear
There are four virtues in Stoic philosophy: wisdom, justice, temperance and courage. Courage is often misunderstood. It’s not the absence of fear. It’s forging ahead despite the presence of fear. And that’s what I decided to do from that point on. Instead of lingering inside my nerves, or giving them validity by talking about them, I’d be courageous. I acknowledged the fear as if it was a person in the room I didn’t care much for.
“Oh, hello fear. There you are again. Go easy on the dip, OK?”
And then I’d move on, despite the fact that my fear was trying to fill me with doubt.
“Not this time, fear. I see you, but I don’t believe you.”
Demonstrating temperance (or moderation) by not buying into the excessiveness of the fear, and courage by pushing through and past the fear, changed nothing on the outside of me. Yet, it changed everything on the inside. Occasionally, a teleprompter would stop working. Or I’d trip on a word in a script. But it’s impossible to attain perfection and, anyway, that’s not the point of showing courage.
The point is to not allow the emotion to dominate. To see it for what it is: a feeling, nothing more. Certainly not a stop sign or a piece of evidence that needs to be followed. I wasn’t in danger. The body’s fight-or-flight response sometimes kicks in when it’s not needed. Fear was an excessive emotion, when weighed against the situation.
Accept what you see
Emotions can come on like hurricanes, surprising and overwhelming us. It takes practice to be in the midst of such a storm and stop to analyze what’s going on instead of being carried away by its wave. It may not happen the first, third, or hundredth time you try, but eventually, it becomes a habit.
There’s always something behind a powerful emotional reaction or overreaction. It could be a callback to a childhood trauma. It could be a fear that’s based on personal history or something you’ve read along the way. And getting to the root of the issue comes through deep, honest introspection.
So, you can see why the word indifferent strikes me as inaccurate. It makes it appear as if Stoics aren’t able to love or feel pain. As if they can’t enjoy the rollercoaster ride through this thing called life. Stoics feel it, but they don’t get caught up in it or build expectations around it. They accept that it’s temporary, good or bad, like everything in this life—even life itself.
Put another way, being stoic doesn’t mean one looks out the window and sees only what’s bad about the view. One looks out the window and accepts what they see as it is, with no judgment or a wish for it to be different.
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image 1 Ruth Becerro; image 2: Public Co; image 3: Ryan McGuire
